John Wilkes Booth

Divided loyalties and ironies tore at Marylanders' hearts throughout the Civil War, as enslaved African Americans and free United States Colored Troops, spies and smugglers, civilians imprisoned without trial to protect freedom, and neighbors and families at odds in Maryland and on faraway battlefields revealed the strains of the conflict. From the Eastern Shore to the suburbs of Washington, eastern Maryland endured those strains in ways difficult to imagine today, and they continued even after Confederate General Robert E. Lee's surrender at Appomattox. After shooting President Abraham Lincoln in Washington, D.C., on April 14, 1865, John Wilkes Booth used the help of Southern Maryland's Confederate underground during his flight.

Maryland · United States